The Life of the Spider
tle surprised, when I pushed the stalk far enough down to twist it round her hiding-place, to see her play with the spikelet more or less contemptuously and push it away with her legs, without troubling to retreat to the back of her lair.
'The Apulian peasants, according to Baglivi's[1] account, also hunt the Tarantula by imitating the humming of an insect with an oat-stalk at the entrance to her burrow. I quote the passage:
'"Ruricolæ nostri quando eas captare volunt, ad illorum latibula accedunt, tenuisque avenaceæ fistulæ sonum, apum murmuri non absimilem, modulantur. Quo audito, ferox exit Tarentula ut muscas vel alia hujus modi insecta, quorum murmur esse putat, captat; captatur tamen ista a rustico insidiatore."[2]
'The Tarantula, so dreadful at first sight, especially when we are filled with the idea
- ↑ Giorgio Baglivi (1669-1707), professor of anatomy and medicine at Rome.—Translator's Note.
- ↑ "When our husbandmen wish to catch them, they approach their hiding-places, and play on a thin grass pipe, making a sound not unlike the humming of bees. Hearing which, the Tarantula rushes out fiercely that she may catch the flies or other insects of this kind, whose buzzing she thinks it to be; but she herself is caught by her rustic trapper."
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